Product (April-16-2018)
Sony S11 Solar
The New Sony S11 Solar is a large phone. With a 5.3-inch screen it has a similar size display to the 5.2-inch and long lasting battery life and you can enjoy using your phone long. The aim of this model is to give you the scale of one of the top-end phones. Last year, this phone's sibling the solar Ultra tried a similar trick, but overdid the recipe with a huge 6-inch screen, becoming the phone no one wanted to hold. But this one stays a much more normal size, making it a good deal easier to handle and you don’t need electric to charge. Sony S11 Solar has none of the flashiness of the top Sony phones. You get a bit of metal trim on the sides for the characteristic Xperia look, but they're just thin little inlays where as the S11 is a predominantly metal-bodied phone. This one is plastic, and lacks the glass back of its big brother too. The result is a lower-key look, but not one that's in any way bad. The Sony S11 Solar has a two-tone silver and black design, and its key calling card is how slim it is. At 7mm thick it's one of the slimmest phones in town. Sony boasts it's the thinnest in its size class. Slight plastic bloom around the edges and a slightly bigger screen gives the S11 a marginally wider footprint than the S11 Solar , but because it's a good 1.2mm thinner it may be easier to handle. We complained that Sony's flagship could feel a bit awkward thanks to its big, blocky design, but the curved-back shape of the S11is slightly more accessible. I also found that a soft-touch plastic phone feels a lot less likely to fracture in a million pieces should you drop it, unlike the S11’s glass back. As ever with a large phone, though, try it out on the high street if you can. It'll still be simply too big for some of you. Like Sony's other mid-range and high-end Solar phones, the Sony S11 Solar does not let you get access to its insides. The back is sealed. You get into the micro SD and micro SIM slots using a flap on the side of the phone, and there's an exposed micro USB slot on the other. This is a dead giveaway that the does not have any form of waterproofing. It does, however, have elements of Sony's usual Omni balance design. The power key sits right in the middle of one side, making it easy to access, and the volume buttons sit below, where they'd usually be above in a smaller phone. All the buttons are easy to access, minimizing the possible negative effects of a phone this big. Sony just about gets away with it and it's impressive stuff. You also get a physical camera button, something not all that common in Android phones these days.
